Whatever you Do, Don't Click on the Google Ads!

I've been doing lots of research lately about ways to make money working from home and ways to make up the shortfall in our joint income due to recent government budget cuts.

Since the majority of my income comes from my Google advertising, both on this blog and on my main website, I've been trying to work out ways to increase the money I make without falling foul of Google's terms and services. Of course, nearly everyone knows that you should never ever click on your own Google ads. That's just wrong and it's also flying in the face of Google. However, I am constantly surprised by the number of people I meet who tell me with a big smile like they've just done me a huge favour that they visited one of my sites and clicked a few ads to help me increase my earnings! Arrrgghhh...

Now, whilst I am happy for people to click the Google ads that appear on my sites, it's only under certain and very specific conditions.

As long as my visitors are clicking because an ad genuinely is of interest to them, then that's great. However, to click on an ad simply because they want to help me out actually doesn't help anyone. It really annoys Google, it really annoys the advertisers and it really annoys me.

Why?

Well clicking on ads just for fun basically costs advertisers a lot of money for false leads. It also costs site owners like me a loss of earnings because Google are pretty clever at detecting fraudulent clicks and penalise site owners accordingly by removing earnings from those clicks and also in some instances banning them from hosting ads if they are deemed to be somehow involved!

So, the golden rule is Never Ever Click on Google Ads unless your interest is genuine. If it is, then great. Site owners like me will continue to make a little money from the advertising on our websites advertisers will be happy to post ads and Google will be happy to supply them. If it isn't, then please, please refrain - I might not make a huge amount of money from my Google ads but what little I do make is much appreciated and helps pay the bills!